


beautiful lie

by Clover (clover_clue)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Betrayal, Body Horror, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gaslighting, Gen, If I need to tag anything else please let me know, MAG 101 spoilers, Mentioned Gertrude Robinson, can you be gaslit by a hallway?, self-injury, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26732461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clover_clue/pseuds/Clover
Summary: The making of a distortion.
Kudos: 22





	beautiful lie

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a short thing I wrote to practice imagery and character studies. Have some Distortion angst!

_ My name is Michael Shelley, and Gertrude is trusting me to do this. _

That was the only clear thought in his fear-stained mind, warped and wandering as much as the hallways he now traversed. Reality had come apart around him, or was he the one coming apart? Michael didn’t know. 

Gertrude, the kind old woman, had given him something. Yes, that’s right. He held it in hands that trembled with every passing second and fingers that spiralled off into oblivion if he looked at them too long. It was some sort of map, he supposed, but it didn’t look like any map he had ever seen before. The hallways stretched out on the parchment, plans to a building that was not a building and would never be one. 

He took his steps as carefully as he could while every bone in his body screamed at him to run. How many bones were in his body? Surely there couldn’t be that many, right? Michael kept his hands tightly on the map, so much that he thought he was going to tear it to pieces. If it were confetti, it would make about as much sense as it currently did. Did sense itself make sense anymore? He supposed not. Not in this place. 

Michael shattered another mirror, as he had done many times since entering its door. He couldn’t care less as his bare fist collided with the glass, releasing fractals of fragments that tore his skin to ribbons. Its mirror wailed as it broke, releasing a layered scream that sounded all too familiar. It didn’t matter to Michael. No matter how much this place toyed with him, he would not back down from this evil. 

_ Gertrude is trusting me to do this.  _

_ But do you trust her? _ The carpet whispered. Or was it the walls? Or the mirrors? Michael didn’t dare look in the direction of any of them, since his eyes hurt too much. Of course he trusted her. She was one of the only ones to believe him, after all. She had listened to his woes about Ryan with open ears and keen eyes, never once showing him a shred of doubt. 

He remembered, as distinctly as he could in this place, coming into work one early morning after a particularly nasty gauntlet of night terrors. Ever-observant Gertrude had seen how shaken up he was and slipped a cup of tea onto his desk when she thought he wasn’t looking. Michael thought it was sweet, in her own stoic way. She valued him enough to make sure he was performing at his best, at least. 

That’s why he was here. Gertrude needed his help, and he was the one to help her fight this evil  _ thing  _ that twisted and warped and danced. 

_ So what?  _ The hallway quietly screamed.  _ You think she cares enough to keep you? You think you are more important than the preservation of the world in her eyes?  _ That’s not what Michael said. Or was it? The corridors of the map hurt his eyes, and the corridors in front of him hurt his eyes. Everything hurt. Michael wracked his brain, which had turned to putty in his hands, and tried to remember why he thought Gertrude cared. 

The realization hit him all at once. Or maybe he had always known? Either way, he understood that Gertrude had never cared about his life. The Gertrude he knew would never send him into the maw of insanity, and the map in his hand only served to end his life for a “greater good” that Michael had so foolishly believed in. 

These thoughts wrung his heart out like a hand towel, but perhaps it was the corridors themselves that did this. It didn’t matter anymore. However much the hallways wanted him gone, they could not get rid of him. Michael Shelley allowed himself to weep for a final instant as the spiral pulled him towards its center. 

The hallways bristled like the arched back of a cat, angry and threatened. It would not be able to stop its unbecoming, but it was going to make Michael  _ hurt _ . He was a fool for entering its corridors and an even bigger fool for doing so on behalf of the Eye. The Archivist had found its heart and forced it to pull itself open from the inside-out. Itself? Himself? Michael didn’t know anymore. 

A cacophony of noise surrounded Michael: torn hands shattering glass, the creaking of doors, and the sharp wails of a betrayed young man wrapped around those of a lie mourning the truth brought to light. 

Amidst the sharp agony of being remade, Michael had only one clear thought in its fear-stained mind.

  
_ Michael Shelley was an idiot, nobody can trust Gertrude Robinson.  _


End file.
